United Healthcare Is Transferring Its Zetia® Antitrust Claims Against Merck & Glenmark BACK To The Original Trial Court, ED VA... Opts Out Of Settlement.

We had mentioned last Fall that some two or three of the insurers might choose to soldier on in this more than decade old, and multi-billion dollar sprawling piece of multidistrict litigation.

That has now happened, as Minnesota's United Healthcare (an insurer) has received the orders it needs, as of yesterday, to prepare for trial back under its original case number, in the federal district court in Norfolk, Virginia. That case number is 20-cv-1005.

You may see the one page order, here. It is not likely that these two or three cases will go above $100 million each, but they might do half that, each -- depending on how much Zetia they were billed for, over the last decade and a half.

So maybe this (in the aggregate) approaches $2 billion, all in -- after the opt-outs' dust has settled. We shall see.

Finally, one of our dozens of prior backgrounders may be found here.

Onward, grinning.

नमस्ते